Emergency vehicles of all types rely on lighting to alert others and to illuminate specific areas. Law enforcement commonly uses a spotlight or other lighting system as an aid to search for suspects and for the safety of the officers. One of the daily challenges of law enforcement in the pursuit of criminals is many crimes are committed and the criminals flee under the cover of darkness. Traditional spotlights are large lamps mounted to the driver's door and include an operating handle so the driver can manipulate the single beam from side to side.
Mounting a single light on the side of a vehicle has inherent limitations, foremost of which is the limited dexterity of the single light in that there is a police car on one side of the light. Mounting a light on the roof of the vehicle may allow for the user to increase the angular movement of the light, but this location typically necessitates a remote motor to actuate a transmission system that physically moves the light from side to side. The driver's door system may also include some mechanical connection from the operating handle to the lamp, but it may be manually operated. A missing bolt or a buildup of ice could inhibit the movement of the lamp by way of the operating handle, but this purely mechanical system is still likely more reliable than a electro-mechanical system where a broken wire or a burnt out motor can result in the inability of the entire system to move the light from one position to another. At this point the spotlight is of little more value than the headlights already on the vehicle. In addition, actuating a mechanical system, be that by hand or by some motor driven actuator, there is a time lapse for this to reasonably happen to move the light beam. If a series of lights are used, the light capable of being reflected in multiple directions from each light source, turning some lights off and others on to change the lighting direction can be virtually instantaneous as well as require no mechanical wear as there are no moving parts.
Law enforcement is a unique industry in that many times the persons being sought are not anxious to be found. A search and rescue mission is the opposite where the object of the search is as interested in being found as the searches are in finding the lost or injured person. With this in mind, the unwilling to be caught may act to remove or disable the light source that is being used to identify their location. If the suspect fires a weapon at, or otherwise damages, the single spotlight, the entire vehicle mounted spotlight system is useless. So, if anything goes wrong with the single light spotlight, either by the illumination source (single bulb burns out) or the ability to move the spotlight, the system may be compromised, if not completely unusable. Travelers on unfamiliar roads and hunters are some other examples of when it may be desirable to have focused light in a particular area that does not blind oncoming traffic and does not result in excessive energy draw from the power of the vehicle.
It should, therefore, be appreciated that there is a need for a directional lighting system which does not require physical movement of the light source, thereby increasing durability of the system and has more than one light source, providing light source redundancy. The present invention fulfills this need and others.